


Refraction

by coalitiongirl_ficlets (coalitiongirl)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 4a, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3699812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl_ficlets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place immediately after 4.07 The Snow Queen. Regina is interrupted by another surprise visitor, this one with her magic out of control and desperate for some help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Refraction

It’s all a disaster. She’s kissing Robin and it’s all a mess because she doesn't  _want_ this, she wants to do the right thing and that has to be about the woman she’d once nearly killed who’d shouted back at the Evil Queen about a family that had meant more than Regina’s destiny should. She’s trying to do  _something_ good, has spent her days consumed with it, and this…this is easier. 

But it’s a disaster and she doesn’t notice how much so until there’s a knock from upstairs and she realizes that her stomach has plummeted and her heart is racing like she’s making another mistake and she opens her eyes and pulls away from Robin just as Emma says, “Oh,” from the entryway.

Her first reaction is relief, her second is frustration, and then she sees Emma’s red eyes and balled fists and instead all that’s left is concern.

“I’ll just…” Emma backs away, somehow diminished in an instant. “Never mind." 

"Emma, wait.” She’d said it before, in this room, in this position, except Robin hadn’t been hovering between them last time.  _You thought we were friends?_ and something in her heart had leapt into her throat as she’d stared at Emma’s pleading face and had wondered if…if maybe she’d found something more valuable, somehow, when she’d lost Robin.

But then she’d kissed Robin and it had been both nothing and all she’d wanted except now it suddenly pales in comparison with Emma blinking back tears in her crypt. “Robin,” she says, and her voice falters. “You need to go." 

"Right.” He looks bewildered, the steam gone from their interaction, and he says, “Can we…shall we talk later?" 

She clears her throat. Emma is still standing in the passageway, pale and silent but her eyes on Regina. "I…I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she says, and Emma’s brow furrows in exact sync with Robin’s. “You know how I feel.” He brightens. “About Marian,” she amends, and he deflates, staring at her. “I won’t give up on her.” She doesn’t know why it’s been so important to save this one victim, except she does. Except she  _has to._

He shakes his head. “I’ve tried–”

“Try harder.” And she can feel the tears of frustration in her eyes, the hopelessness again of  _this is your happy ending?_  but Robin is leaving at last and Emma is there, Emma takes small steps toward her before she stops. “What is it?" 

"I’ve been–” Emma holds up her hands, still in fists, and the words begin to run together as her voice hitches. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I let the Snow Queen get to me and there’s magic–” She teeters like she might fall and then she’s crying again, silent tears streaming from her eyes, and Regina’s moving forward before she can stop herself, catching Emma with palms against fists.

Something explodes from Emma’s hands, white and hot and dangerous, and Regina’s thrown backward with a curse, crashing into a pile of useless books as Emma cries out in alarm.

She rubs her back and stands again as Emma clutches her hands to her abdomen, eyes frantic and fearful. Of  _her_. Emma’s magic is out of control but she’s afraid of…

 _Of how she might react._  And the pieces are suddenly all too clear. “You did this in front of your parents,” Regina guesses. “Hook?  _Henry_?” Her voice gets more strident and Emma flinches under it. 

“Not Henry,” she says quickly, and the rest is understood.

“They didn’t take it too well?”

Emma is holding her hands tightly again, crushed against her stomach like she’s afraid of what might happen next, and Regina concludes, “Of course they didn’t." 

"I hurt my father,” Emma says dully. “I need to…I need to make it stop.”

“It helps if you’re calm.” She remembers being breathless next to a mirror, terrified as Emma is now and her mother gone, and she’d touched the wall and it had exploded in a blast of energy. “I think I have some cider in–”

“No.” Emma whispers. “I need it to  _stop_.” And she’s shaking her head and squeezing her fists like she can somehow force the magic out of them and Regina understands with dawning dismay.

“Emma, no. You can’t-” She shakes her head helplessly. “It’s a part of you.” She’s struck suddenly by the memory of the two of them fighting side by side, hands out and powers merged and she’d had the rare magical partner before but with Emma it’s different. It leaves her in wonder and exhilaration as though anything is possible and she’s only one piece of the greater whole that is the two of them together. “It’s who you are.”

Emma’s eyes flash, defiant. “I was a lot more than the  _savior_  before I broke that curse. Now it’s all I am. I had…I had my…I had Mary Margaret,” she says, and the tears roll faster now, the anger sliding onto her face and Regina is surprised it had taken this long. “Because of  _your curse_. Because my parents sent me away because of you and now I’m just…” She chokes on the words and her hands are lighting up again, sparking like wild electric cords, and Regina ventures closer, hands out and magic thrumming beneath her palms.

Emma is sobbing again and she’s sightless and angry and she doesn’t move when Regina closes her hands around her fists, contains the magic before she ever makes contact with Emma herself, and Emma stumbles forward again but this time Regina’s there to catch her.

Their magic bubbles around them, Emma’s still uncontrolled but Regina’s gently filtering it out. And Emma in her arms feels so different from being in Robin’s arms, it feels like Henry and Snow and the weight of the past and the pain and love that comes from it. Emma in her arms with magic around them is exhilaration and  _together_ and comfort and  _right_ and Regina closes her eyes and lets her palms slide along Emma’s wrists and up her arms until she has tentative hands pressed to Emma’s narrow shoulder blades, pulling her closer as Emma slants forward to rest her head hesitantly against Regina’s own shoulder.

In a gesture so overly sentimental that she flushes at herself, she presses quick lips against the top of Emma’s head and feels a stilted smile against her bare shoulder. “You were the savior when you pulled me out of a burning building, Emma. No magic required." 

She gets another movement of lips on skin and a shiver runs through her in response. "Yeah,” Emma agrees, and shifts even closer to her.

“Magic is a part of who you are. But the savior is what you do.” Emma runs into battles and possible death and clashes with her parents to save her, time and again, and she knows that her…family…loves her for it. “It’s an idiotic title, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Your parents are so besotted with it because it’s a piece of what makes you so…tolerable.”

Emma laughs a shuddery laugh against her.

They’re locked together now, Emma’s hands creeping along her waist and her hair brushing against Regina’s chin, and  _gods_ , it feels so good. She doesn’t want to think about why it is that it’s suddenly all she can think about. Have they ever been this close before? Have they ever  _hugged_ before? She can’t imagine that they have. She doesn’t know how she’s lasted this long without this.

When Emma does pull away to stare at her, she can’t contain the sharp loss of her, and she takes a breath and stares back, at once equally somber. Emma demands suddenly, “You really sent Robin off?" 

"Again, yes,” she sighs. At this point it’s just prolonged torture being around him, a reminder of another good thing in her life incomprehensibly destroyed in the most unlikely way possible. Except it had given her  _this_ , and this sentimentality toward Emma has gone too farif she’s equating a hug from her to a happy ending with her soulmate.

And yet. And yet.

Emma smiles, eyes still wet but suddenly bright like  _See? It’s a start,_ and Regina’s heart bursts again as it had then, a thousand promises on her tongue. “Can I…can I say it’s admirable now?" 

"It’s…something,” she manages, and Emma’s really smiling at her now. “What?” she demands, unsure if she’s being mocked or patronized.

But Emma’s eyes are shining through the tears and she asks, “Have you ever…” She waves her hands. “With magic?”

“I don’t think you want to equate your experience with the Evil Queen’s,” Regina grumbles, but new warmth is returning to her, brought with the sun of Emma’s timid little smile that falters and becomes somber again as her eyes still shine.

“I don’t think I’d call you evil right now,” Emma murmurs, and slides her hands onto the backs of Regina’s. Regina watches them, spellbound. Emma looks up, still timid, but determination beneath her eyes. “You’ve been struggling with it for years, right? Since the curse.”

Emma is looking at her like she suddenly  _knows_ , like Regina’s her light at the end of the tunnel and this is the part where they understand each other. Where Emma had been right that night when she’d come here and this is what they’d lost and what they can begin to rebuild.

Friendship. Something more than that. "Yes.“

Her hands turn to link with Emma’s and Emma squeezes them, fierceness returned to her voice at last as she says, "Show me.”


End file.
